Random observations about Bilbao

*You see the entire spectrum of the life cycle here - TONS of little kids (most popular age range appears to be 2-5 years), as well as tons of older people - often the grandparents are toting their grandkids around - to the park, to the museum, to the cafes, etc.

*Bilbaínos are in general better looking, more fashionable and more stylish than Madrileños

*People in Bilbao speak Basque first and Spanish second, and apparently no English. Not that I expect people to speak English in a country where English is not an official language, but if we didn't speak rudimentary Spanish, not sure how we'd communicate with anyone here. Even the folks at the spa in our hotel didn't speak English so we had to communicate with Spanish, and to the extent the vocabulary exceeded our comprehension, hand gestures. However, we've had no problems so far getting our point across - I even went to a salon and got my roots retouched today. The Basque language is completely incomprehensible to me but cool to hear - lots of E, Z, T, and K sounds

*The women here may not be as fashionable as the French, but they all have fabulous hair, which is why I trusted a local salon to tint my roots

*Bilbaínos appear to have a love affair with mayonnaise - they put gobs of it on everything. GOBS.

*Couples in Bilbao, old and young, are very affectionate with each other and PDA is everywhere. It's quite cute and lovely to see

*The wine is fabulous. I haven´t had a bad glass yet in Spain

*Bilbao is a wonderful juxtaposition of provincial old world Europe and super-green, über-modern futurama

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I am completely at a loss as to how Spain is not a third world country. The people here don't ever work! You walk out at 10:30 am and EVERYTHING is closed. A little after 11 am, a few stores start opening up. By noon maybe half the stores are open, but at 2 pm every store closes down again for a two hour lunch. If you are lucky, they might open back up at 4 or 4:30. But chances are they are all taking a siesta. Finally at 6 pm you see most stores open. Then everything except restaurants and bars closes again around 9 pm.

The Spanish know how to live - work as little as possible, drink only good wines (and drink it for breakfast, lunch, teatime, dinner), eat every meal as if it is your last, and party till the sun rises. Let's all move to Spain!

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As an example of how fabulous the food is here...for lunch today I had caviar and foie gras. Tiny portions of each of course, and as every good bite of food in Bilbao, it came on a tiny piece of crusty bread. My absolute favorite pintxo bar so far is El Globo in Bilbao, where we had lunch today. Our pintxos included: fried artichoke, goat cheese with sweet onion confit, seared foie gras and anchovy with caviar. So decadent...